Magnetic impurities in the pnictide superconductor Ba1−xKxFe2As2

Abstract

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements have been performed on single crystals of Ba1−xKxFe2As2 (x=0, 0.45) and CaFe2As2 grown from Sn flux. The Ba-based pnictide crystals contain significant amounts of Sn in their structure, ∼1%, giving rise to magnetic impurity effects evident in the NMR spectrum and in the magnetization. Our experiments show that the large impurity magnetization is broadly distributed on a microscopic scale, generating substantial magnetic field gradients. There is a concomitant 20% reduction in the transition temperature, which is most likely due to magnetic electron scattering. We suggest that the relative robustness of superconductivity (x=0.45) in the presence of severe magnetic inhomogeneity might be accounted for by strong spatial correlations between impurities, such as clustering on the coherence length scale.